Day: October 16, 2017

Keeping Up With The Nothings

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We’re all here together on the same planet, sharing space and trying to be kind and maybe make some things happen. Nobody’s better or worse than anyone else, but it’s not unfair to explore the overall with a sudden-death calculus. If Harvey Weinstein were to die in a plane crash today, some might argue that the world would be a slightly better place. If Kyle Buchanan, Kris Tapley or Scott Feinberg‘s luck were to suddenly run out, the film industry would be a less quantifiable place. If Oliver Stone or Paul Schrader were to fall off a 200-foot cliff, film culture would suddenly have less wit and dimension. If Saoirse Ronan were to get hit by a bus, we’d all be short a Best Actress contender. If Irving the plumber catches a stray bullet, a lot of sinks, bathtubs and toilets wouldn’t function as well. But if Kris Jenner, Kourtney Kardashian, Kim Kardashian, Khloe Kardashian, Kendall Jenner and Kylie Jenner were to die in a plane crash tomorrow, in what way would the world suddenly be a lesser place? Be honest.

Battle Sweat

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If you’re any kind of cinema hound the crisp, super-detailed capturings from 35mm big-studio films of the classic era should at least give you a semi-stiffie. If they don’t then what can I say? There’s something missing inside you, and there’s no medicine or special diet or surgery than can fix this. And I’m no fan of Sergeant York, mind. Even when I was a kid I found it dreary and sanctimonious, excepting that one portion when Gary Cooper kills several German soldiers and single-handedly captures over 100 of them, etc. But I love the cinematography by Sol Polito, whose other credits include Archie Mayo‘s The Petrified Forest and a slew of Michael Curtiz films including The Adventures of Robin Hood, Angels With Dirty Faces, The Sea Hawk and Captains of the Clouds (Academy Award for Best Color Cinematography) plus Irving Rapper‘s Now, Voyager and Frank Capra‘s Arsenic and Old Lace. A new Bluray is available in the European PAL format, but nothing for NTSC viewers.

What Does “Deserve” Even Mean?

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Jimmy Kimmel: “I want everyone with a television to watch the show. But if [right-wing assholes are] so turned off by my opinion on health care and gun violence then I don’t know, I probably wouldn’t want to have a conversation with them anyway. Not good riddance, but riddance.”

I flinched when Tracy Smith asked Kimmel if he “deserve[s] to be here now.” Bad guys deserve the bad stuff that happens to them — I get that equation — but I’ve never understood how this or that person “deserves” happiness or great success or a pleasant fate. You can work your ass off and pour your heart into your scheme or career or whatever, but that doesn’t necessarily mean shit in the end. You might deserve to be happy, but that’s no guarantee of anything. You can have one or two things going for you, but there can be five or six things going on beneath that can take you down or stop your train. I’m basically saying that “deserve” is not a word that attuned people should use. It means nothing. I certainly never use it.

Woman, Will You Weep For Me?

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Where did I read an observation about the odd-couple pairing of Donald Trump and Mike Pence that compared Trump to the Rat Pack-era Dean Martin and Pence to Hugh Beaumont‘s Ward Cleaver in Leave It To Beaver? While I work on running that down, consider the following from Jane Mayer‘s 10.23 New Yorker piece, “The Danger of President Pence”:

Two gay deserters are standing in front of Mike Pence‘s Tom Dunson in a climactic scene from Red River. Gay guy #1: “Why doncha get your Bible and read over us after you shoot us?” Pence (smug, sneering): “I’m gonna hang ya.” Montgomery Clift (as the closeted Matthew Garth): “No, no you’re not. You’re not gonna hang those men.” Pence: “Who’ll stop me?” Clift: “I will.”

Nolan’s Spy Who Loved Me Disconnect

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Fandor has posted a video about Chris Nolan‘s favorite films, or those “which may have helped shape his unique directorial sensibility.” 2001: A Space Odyssey (fine), Koyaanisqatsi (potrzebie), The Thin Red Line (“Malick’s portrayal of mental states and memory”) and….wait, Lewis Gilbert‘s The Spy Who Loved Me? Nolan quote: “At a certain point the Bond films fixed in my head as a great example of scope and scale in large scale images.”

Maybe, but The Spy Who Loved Me was the first Bond film to (a) embrace flagrant fakeness, (b) an ironic air-quote attitude and (c) a kind of japey, self-mocking comedic tone. Goldfinger was the first Bond film to pass along a self-amused, partially self-satirizing approach to rugged secret-agent machismo — The Spy Who Loved Me was the first to look the audience in the eye and say, “You may have gathered or deduced that we were having fun with 007 before. Well, from here on we have absolutely no genuine investment in the classic Ian Fleming James Bond realm — it’s all a fucking joke.”

When has Chris Nolan ever come within 1000 miles of Gilbert’s sensibility in anything he’s ever directed?

Big Cat

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“Ya home?…my son, this is your time…we own ya…I waited my entire life for this…the world’s gonna start over…what happens now?…the revolution will be live,” etc. Speaking as a dedicated hater of superhero films, as a sworn enemy of the DC/Marvel universes (except for Ant-Man and the first two Captain America films and maybe one or two others), I half-regret acknowledging that Black Panther feels like some kind of rejuvenation, and that even I feel revved about it. This isn’t just a superhero flick — it’s a major rattling of the Mike Pence cage. Yo bumblefucks…we own ya. Fred Hampton lives.